snarryhols (snarryhols) wrote in snarry_holidays, @ 2008-11-20 10:58:00 |
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Entry tags: | fic, giftee: darkladyvamp, rated: nc-17 |
Fic: Hard Lessons
Title: Hard Lessons
Author: ravenna_c_tan
Giftee: darkladyvamp
Word Count: 4200
Rating: NC-17
Pairing: Snape/Harry
Warnings: Consensual BDSM (specifically blindfolds, bondage, flogging, corporal punishment)
Disclaimer: Non-commercial fanfic.
Summary: Harry never did master Occlumency, and Severus fears he is the only one who dares teach Harry the truly hard lessons.
Author's Notes: darkladyvamp said "I don’t mind angst, as long as the ending is happy. As for kinks, BDSM, is my main one. I’m not particular to whether it’s DH compliant, but again, happy ending is all I really need, for our boys. I’d like Severus to be IC as much as possible, Harry as well," and suggested "Severus taking advantage of Harry’s crush on the Half-Blood Prince." A lovely suggestion, my dear, here's the plot bunny that bit me in the arse the instant I saw your request! It's not DH-compliant at all because I'd say after this, book seven would have come out so very different...! Thanks to C. and L. for the beta-reads. Many pieces of dialogue come directly from Half-Book Prince.
"Murder! Murder in the bathroom!"
My robes flap behind me as I rush to the scene of the crime, utterly sure that young Malfoy's foolishness has finally borne terrible fruit.
But no, Malfoy's own blood is reddening the water, and the gore and screaming and mayhem have left one pair of green eyes round with shock. And, I think for a moment, with recognition? But no, he is as ignorant as ever.
I shall deal with Potter in a moment, as healing the Malfoy scion must be my priority now, not only for appearance sake but for Narcissa's damnable Vow.
I know already which spell he has used, I know already what a terrible weapon Potter is being wrought into, because it is I who am shaping him, though he knows it not.
* * *
My visits into his dreams began in his fifth year, the year of what Albus dubbed "Occlumency Lessons."
I knew better. Even Albus himself was growing fearful of the boy, and I quickly realized it would be my duty to teach him what he needed to know. Not Occlumency, for the boy was hopeless at that. I took it upon myself to hone him into the man we would soon need, a wizard capable of withstanding the worst pain, yet also able to deal death magic when it was needed, without ever losing the goodness of his heart. In Albus's eyes he would always be an innocent.
So be it. When the old man's plan fell apart and I banished the boy from my sight, my own plan took precedence. A sliver of sympathy for me had been planted that day, a tiny crack into which I could worm my way, a crack in the facade he held in his mind of his perfect and noble father. Being just like James would not serve him, James who was killed with hardly a thought from the Dark Lord. No, Potter would need to be something else. Something more.
His dreams were so easy to invade, once that nagging thought was planted. I did not need to have my soul linked with his, after all, as the Dark Lord did, only my mind. And there were plenty of sticky cobwebs holding us together after all his failed attempts at Occlumency and his own Legilimency of me when he turned the spell back on me.
I can recall that first dream as clearly as if viewing it in a Pensieve. He was walking down the stairs to the dungeon, his books in his arms, urgent as one is in dreams, though whether he was hurrying toward something or away from something, I did not know.
I was a shadow, a smudge of darkness in an alcove. I reached out to drag him backward by the collar of his robes. He saw nothing, pulled back into the dark, my hands around him, one around his chest, the other slipping downward and the reason he did not fight back. My fingers slid into his too-large trousers to cup the hot flesh of his cock, and he bucked hard into the touch with a hungry sound.
Yes, what young man of his age does not dream of hands and tongues and mouths, faceless lovers and wordless releases? I stroked him, wringing needy cries from him, until he came hard, his body pressing back against mine. I tasted his hair in my mouth, drowned in his scent, and wanted nothing more than to hold him fast against me until I could grind out my own release, on him or in him, I did not care...
But my control is much, much better than that. I let him go, with just a whisper of suggestion that there was more where that came from.
In my own chambers I came out of my trance to find myself so hard I was aching. My hand was a mere blur as I tugged on my foreskin, my body finishing quickly what my mind had begun.
* * *
I can sense he has not moved, that he has not fled, as any logically thinking wizard would have. I think again, could he have realised? Could he know? But then I must concentrate on the healing chant, on knitting together the flesh that my own incantation severed.
* * *
The first time I spoke to him in a dream was a few weeks later. By then my wanking him in the dark was nearly a nightly occurrence. I led him each time deeper and deeper into the dungeon, into the room in my mind of my own making. Perhaps the walk in his dreamworld approximated the way to my own quarters at Hogwarts, perhaps they did not.
I began to make him leave his robes behind, to follow me—just a shadow, still—deeper and deeper into the dungeon; he had to shed his clothes, piece by piece, so that when he finally went through the doorway into the room I had prepared, he was completely naked.
In his dreams, Potter was not as small nor as young as he appeared in real life, and for that I was perhaps grateful. It made him resemble James more than ever, but also made it easier for me to do what I had to.
By now he surrendered easily to the logic of the dream, not fighting it, not trying to create or control it himself, since after all, when he surrendered to it, he would be rewarded with pleasure, would he not?
When I spoke, it was to say "On your knees." And I bound his eyes from behind with a cloth.
There was no fear in him. Was there ever, in dreams or in life? I probably could have pushed him harder and faster than I did, but I knew I would only get one chance.
Now with him kneeling and blind, I let my fingers run across his lips, preparing him for more. When they would have been tingling from the touch, I leaned close, close enough his breath mingled with mine, to see what he would do.
He tipped his head upward into a kiss, nibbling at my mouth tentatively at first, then opening his wider, inviting more from me, until he had kissed himself breathless and panting.
I stood back. Interesting. I'd expected him to pull back, or to bite, or to reach up with his hands when he sensed me near.
"Hands behind your back," I said, then. He nodded his head and complied, his mouth full and red and swollen from the kiss.
The room was only a chamber in my mind. It had no real walls, no ceiling, just a floor on which he knelt, and the doorway through which he'd entered.
I stood naked before him and told myself he could be pushed further, faster. If I wished to prove my control was perfect, I would have let him go then. But what did I have left to prove? I wanted to see what would happen.
I neared him again, until I could feel his breath on the head of my cock. With one steadying hand around my balls, I carefully rocked forward, the silken head sliding along his reddened bottom lip. I was rewarded by his lips parting, by him taking me in inch by inch, until I was holding him still by the hair and pumping my hips, fucking the velvet of his tongue on each press forward, the roughness of his palate on each pull back.
"Good, very good," I found myself saying. "Each time you surrender, you become stronger. Accept what I give and I will teach you things you can only learn in dreams."
He nodded his head at this blather like it was deep wisdom.
"The tests will become harder," I said, as my fucking of his mouth became more urgent. And then quite suddenly I was spilling all over him, into his mouth, over his cheeks. And much to my surprise I found him fountaining untouched against his own belly. Such is the way of dreams.
* * *
I carry the Malfoy boy to the infirmary, but my mind is back in the bathroom with Potter. Stupid, stupid boy, I think. But what did I expect, given the mentoring I have given him? It is only a matter of time before a dagger left out of its sheath cuts someone.
Hope flares once again that this is truly the moment, and that all of the training has not been wasted by Potter's hasty, clumsy attempt. He stayed where I told him to, I think. Surely that counts for something.
* * *
After the death of his godfather there was a time when I could not entice him into the dungeon in his dreams. Damn Molly Weasley for introducing him to a potion that would make his sleep dreamless; I chafed and fretted for the better part of a month before he crept back in one night when I was not watching for him.
I was asleep myself, not in a trance, and barely able to get my occlusion up in time as he came barrelling into my dream. Quite suddenly I had an armful of naked, sobbing hero, his cock no less eager for his tears.
"It hurts, doesn't it?" I said, not knowing what else to say. I know what the pain of losing someone you love is like.
He nodded. "Can you make it go away?"
"No. But I can make it part of your armour. I cannot take the pain away but I can teach you to use it."
"Teach me." Oh, the irony of him saying those words to me. "What do I have to do?"
"I told you the tests would get harder, didn't I?"
"Yes."
"Reach up. Take hold of the bar above your head. Let go and I will send you back where you came from."
"No! Don't. I need you..."
"Then do not let go."
"All right."
He did as I asked, spreading his feet for better stability, not incidentally giving me a gorgeous image of his arsehole, barely visible between his cheeks as I circle around behind him.
A flogger then. It appeared in my hand, heavy with potential. I trailed the supple leather tails down his back once before swinging it to strike him. The first strike was not hard, just enough to jar him and startle him. But I saw his fists clench tighter around the bar, and knew he would not let go.
I settled into a rhythm, striking him with downward strokes, no single blow too painful to bear, but the cumulative effect wearing him down, until he surrendered to tears, not of grief, but of catharsis.
And still he did not let go the bar, nor beg me to stop. Extraordinary. Perhaps it was that, and the sight of his skin so utterly inflamed, his head slumped against his chest but his hands still holding on, that inspired me to toss the flogger into the mist and embrace him from behind.
My cock nestled between the globes of his arse, but sex was not at the forefront of my mind. Not until he pressed back against me.
"No," I said. "That is a lesson for another day." And I wrapped my hand around his cock and brought him off quickly, kissing him hard.
* * *
Pomfrey is in a dither. I spend longer settling her down and satisfying her inane questions than I do healing Malfoy's wounds. I finally leave it to Malfoy himself to urge her to apply the dittany and then I am rushing back toward the bathroom.
The mere thought that Potter obeyed me, something he would normally never do in real life, has made my cock rigid under my robes.
I pass back through the protective spells I had hastily thrown behind me as I'd carried Malfoy off. If this is to be our moment of truth, it would not do to have meddling McGonagall or any of the boy's other mother hens interrupt us.
* * *
Getting the book into Potter's hands was easy. Ridiculously easy. But I had not predicted the zeal with which he would absorb the lessons I had writ there at his age, the age when I forged myself into a weapon.
I also did not predict that the dream lover who whipped him to orgasm on a regular basis and the imaginary protector he thought of as the Half Blood Prince would become one in his mind.
He shocked me with it the night I was teaching him about blades. "I want to see you," he said, as I kissed the perfect flesh on the back of his shoulder with the straight razor. He shivered under the rapturous sensation and said it again.
I looked down to see the power of his wish manifesting itself in our dream world. I do not know what my face looked like—perhaps he could not imagine in that detail, but my body was younger, my scars gone.
"Please," he begged. "You said... you said..."
"What? What did I say?"
"That it was a lesson for another time. Can now be the time?"
I healed the cut I had made with a touch of my finger, a soft chant, and then a kiss on the back of his neck. "You don't have to see me for me to make love to you," I said, though my resistance was merely token. My cock had already decided that yes, now was the time.
He made a sound of disappointment, but pressed back against me. "I want..."
"I know what you want," I said. The truth of the subconscious is easy to speak in dreams, even to myself. "You want to not be alone. You want a lover, a true lover who is a part of you, who is so close you feel like you are inside each other."
"Yes." He sobbed and damn if I didn't feel that like a dagger in the heart. I was supposed to be helping him build his armour, turning him into a piece of magical danger, not exposing his vulnerabilities.
"I need..."
"Hush or I'll gag you. I know what you need."
The bar. The bar would not do for his first time, even in dreams, and I knew it. I conjured a bed instead, but could not allow him to take control of this fantasy. I would not be used that way.
So I pressed him down onto clean sheets, and bound him there with leather straps, lovingly tightened about wrist and ankle. He did not protest, even when the bonds pulled his legs wide.
I caressed his arsecheeks, accustoming him to the touch and perhaps preparing myself mentally as well. This is not where these dreams should have led. His arousal was only ever meant to be the key to unlock his mind for me. But now he was open and needy before me, I could not do him the psychic violence of rejecting him.
Or so I told myself.
"I trust you," he said.
I mounted him swiftly, then, in the manner of dreams, no lubricant or stretching necessary, just taking him, spread there before me, begging for me. Sex is sex and sex is symbolism. He wanted a part of me inside him, to be with him always, even if it was not me, precisely, he wanted.
I do not think I have ever come so hard in my life.
* * *
He stares up at me, defiant even in the face of near-murder. I know why. It is because in his dreams I have shaped him to be without remorse, answerable only to the logic and morality inside his head, a morality that is as rotten as my own, as the one that would let me fuck him senseless night after night, that would let me whip him until his skin was raw and then frot against the welts until I covered him in come, that would let me bind him with ropes, immobilising him but leaving his mouth and arse accessible for my use.
I no longer need the lubricant potion by my bedside. I awaken from sleep or trance covered in my own spunk, without ever touching myself physically. And yet. There remains a gnawing ache, a physical need that cannot be sated fully from just dreams.
If ever I am to reveal myself to him, or to receive acknowledgement of what he already knows, it should be now.
"Apparently I underestimated you, Potter," I say, my voice quiet in the echoing stone of the room. "Who would have thought you knew such Dark Magic? Who taught you that spell?"
His answer speaks volumes. "I--read about it somewhere."
"Where?" Potter, do not do this to me. Give me a sign that you know of what you speak, and if you deny me, give reason. I know we may be observed, though I cannot say which of my masters' reactions would be worse.
"It was--a library book." Potter lies baldly and badly. "I can't remember what it was call--"
"Liar!" I cannot stand it. I cannot stand it for even one more moment, to have him defy me so, after months--a year!--of obedience and willingness each night. I must know if it is an act or true ignorance on his part. I must know if the defiance is real or if he knows not to whom he speaks.
I enter his mind easily. He never has, after all, learnt Occlumency, and he is more open to me now than ever. I hear him gasp as I pull him into my own occlusion, a dreamworld version of the room in which we are standing, in bloody puddles.
He looks up and sees me now, the Half Blood Prince, sees me as I have never shown myself to him before, his mental image of the Prince and my own merging. His mouth is round with shock.
"Who taught you that spell," I repeat, the wand in my hand suddenly transfigured into a cane.
He swallows hard. "Y-you did. Sir."
Ah, at last, the respect I have always deserved but never received from him. Until now. It only makes me want him more, not in revenge now, no. But in possession, protecting him as he deserves and as no one else, especially not Dumbledore, will.
"Do you understand why I did it this way?" I ask softly, needing to hear it from his own lips, if he can stand to admit it.
"Because they'd have your head if you taught me how to cast Avada Kedavra?" he guesses, but he guesses well.
"Just so," I say. "But Mr. Malfoy is not a practice dummy. You may think of him as the junior Dark Lord, but I assure you, he is far more innocent and far less dangerous that you are."
"I'm sorry... I didn't mean to..."
"You'll need to be punished," I say, whipping the cane through the air so it makes a cutting sound. "Drop your trousers. Hands on the sink."
"Yes, Sir." His voice is a whisper, his face pale now, instead of angry red. He does not fight, and that makes me want him all the more, to see him bend his will to mine, to see things my way. "I deserve to be punished."
"Count," I say, as he takes his position, his robes laid aside, his trousers around his ankles. And then I let the cane fly.
He cries out on the first strike, managing only as I am about to hit him again to stammer out, "Uh-uh-one!" The place where the cane bit welts up bright red against his pale arse. He is panting already and that was only the first blow.
I draw my arm back again and strike him just above the first stripe and he cries out again. "Two!"
The third buckles his knees, and he clings to the basin, but I tap him insistently with the tip of the cane on the hip until he regains his posture. He tenses for four, clenches for five, and then collapses again for six.
He suddenly realizes I have not told him how many blows he is to take. I read the moment as it surges and then passes, and he begins to weep.
"Four more," I say, putting my hand on the small of his back to steady him. "Four more."
He shakes and trembles, a new flood coming forth, some grateful tears, some with new remorse. "I can't..."
"Do you trust me?"
He has to pause to think about it, and I nearly give in to the irrational urge to beat him until he passes out, but then he gives the answer that redeems all. "Yes. Yes, I trust you."
I want to gather him in my arms and swear to protect him from all dangers. But I cannot. Not when I know soon he will face the greatest danger of our age and I will be the one who places him in harm's way. "Four more, then," I say.
"Yes, Sir." His voice is a whisper, but his tears are gone, his body calm, his mien not of surrender, but of acceptance, of a kind of peace.
I draw the tip of the cane down the muscles of his back, and gently over the welts on his arse. "One," I whisper. Then I caress the inner part of his thigh with it. "Two." I slip it between his legs, whispering past his low-hanging bollocks like a violin bow. "Three." And I circle and just barely breach the pucker of his entrance with the tip before I drop the piece of wood. "Four."
And now I do put my arms around him.
"Make love to me," he says then. "Now that I know. Please."
I shake my head. "Now that you know, the dream world will never be enough."
"That's what I mean. I can slip down to the dungeons..."
"No. Have you forgotten the Dark Lord can see all too well what goes on in your head? The only place we are safe to do as we wish is here, behind the walls of my occlusion."
He glances around, blinking. He has forgotten that this is all taking place in my mind, and not in the actual bathroom where he nearly killed Malfoy. "But..."
"We must go back. And you must pretend that nothing has changed between us. We must both pretend."
He makes an anguished sound and presses himself against me. He is clad only in his shirt and tie and I envelop him in my robes. "But you can punish me," he says, in a small hopeful voice. "In the real world."
Damn him for knowing how to wield the truth like a sword. "Which to anyone watching..." Would merely look like I was exercising my sadistic revenge on my least favourite student.
"You could..." He shivers with both fear and anticipation. "You could cane me for real."
Sweet Merlin, this is what I have wrought. Or perhaps it is his Fate to take pleasure from pain, since his life has had so little of the former and so much of the latter.
"Tonight," I say, pressing a kiss to his forehead. "Tonight when you dream, I'll be there. Tonight and every night if you need me, Harry..."
"But in real life? Severus, who would know if you... took out your frustrations on me during detention? You... you already..."
Damn him. "I have never laid a hand on you. Not like that."
"Yet." His eyes are huge as he searches my face, as he searches his own soul, wondering if he can truly suffer what he is asking me for. "I'll know," he says finally, "that when you strike me, it's because you love me. And if you... take liberties..."
"Don't say any more." I seize him by the shoulders. "Are you ready to go back?"
"No, but I will. I... I understand."
"Good." One last kiss, and when he opens his eyes we are glaring at one another in the bathroom, water sloshing as I take a threatening step toward him.
"Do you know what I think, Potter?" I say, very quietly. "I think that you are a liar and a cheat and that you deserve detention with me every Saturday until the end of term."
I see his eyes go wide at that. He argues—he plays his part well—but I can read the thought there: every Saturday? It is out of the ordinary. It is exactly what he wants and I know it. It is my commitment to him, spoken the only way I know how. And so long as he knows the love behind the actions, I will not stay my hand.
-end-